Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Stéphane Ratti, Le premier saint Augustin. Paris: Les Belles lettres, 2016. Pp. 350. ISBN 9782251446103. €23.90 (pb).

Reviewed by Matthieu Pignot, Uniwersytet Warszawski (m.pignot@uw.edu.pl)

Version at BMCR home site

Publisher's Preview

As stated in the prefatory note, Stéphane Ratti's book stems from the author's teaching at the Université pour Tous de Bourgogne (UTB). It focuses on the young Augustine, from his birth (354) to his election to episcopacy (395-396), aiming to shed light on Augustine's progressive renunciation of paideia and conversion to Christianity. In this respect, Ratti's study follows in the steps of previous scholarship, as constant attention has been devoted to the issue of Augustine's conversion. Since the nineteenth century at least, scholars have aimed at highlighting the nature of Augustine's conversion, as famously told in his Confessiones.¹ They have disagreed on whether a line should be drawn between the rhetorician and Neoplatonist Augustine and the Christian Augustine, and, if so, when this break should be situated in Augustine's life. Ratti's book follows a sceptical reading of Augustine's Confessiones and draws a sharp distinction between pagan learning and Christianity. The author's thesis is that Augustine's conversion, going together with his choice to abandon what the author calls "traditional pagan learning", should not be situated in Milan in 386 but rather in Africa, between his ordination to priesthood in 391, and 395-396. Rather than being a biography, this book provides a study of specific aspects of Augustine's early life that in the author's view demonstrate his thesis.

The book is divided into 20 chapters and an epilogue in three parts. They follow the chronology of Augustine's life, but focus on particular points of interest. The Confessiones, the main source for Augustine's early life, provide the framework for Ratti's chapters until Augustine's conversion. In these chapters, which also contain useful discussions about the broader historical context, the author emphasises the apparent contrast between the young Augustine, adhering to pagan learning and culture, and the critical recollections of this youth in the Confessiones.

The first two chapters discuss Punic, Greek and Roman heritage in Augustine's life, underlining his lack of knowledge of Punic and Greek, the significance of Latin and Roman culture and education in his life, and Augustine's ambiguous relationship to it. Chapter 3 and 4 deal with sex and intimacy in Augustine's early life as told in the second book of the Confessiones, the contrast between Augustine's rather open talk about sex and about his relationship with his own body, and the guilty retelling of it, in particular the episode of the theft of the pears, which Ratti peculiarly reads as a reference to sexual transgression. Chapter 5 explores Augustine's encounter with paganism in Carthage as described in the third book of the Confessiones, and reflects on the philosophical schools that he may have encountered and that may have influenced him, particularly Neoplatonism. Chapter 6 deals with pagan theatre, emphasising the young Augustine's enjoyment of it in Carthage, and the later critical views of the bishop. Chapter 7 discusses Augustine's faithful relationship with his unnamed concubine, and Augustine's later guilty recollections. Ratti suggests that despite her bearing him a son (Adeodatus), Augustine attempted to avoid procreation, and when she was eventually dismissed, this was decided by Monica. Chapters 8 and 9 argue that the young Augustine's ambition was to follow the example of pagan philosophers. Chapter 8 presents evidence about Hierus, the rhetorician, a major model for the young Augustine according to Ratti, while Chapter 9 argues that Augustine left Carthage for Rome because of his growing interest in pagan culture and his ambition to enter the circle of famous pagan intellectuals.

Chapter 10 provides a description of Rome in 384 as the pagan city par excellence, rejected by Augustine in his recollections, and Augustine's temporary adhesion to the Academics, which he encountered through the writings of Cicero. The author argues that Augustine's growing scepticism was part of a secular philosophical quest rather than a prelude to his conversion to Christianity. Chapter 11 describes Augustine's teaching in Rome and the figure of Symmachus, who, according to Ratti, chose and sent Augustine to Milan, because he would already have heard about Augustine in Carthage. Chapters 12 and 13 discuss Augustine's activities in Milan. Chapter 12 describes the troubled historical context of Augustine's arrival in the city, Augustine's relationship with Ambrose and his role as father of Augustine in baptism, the speech of the young ambitious Augustine in honour of Valentinian II and condemnation of it in the Confessiones. For Ratti, the meeting with Ambrose was not decisive for Augustine's conversion, although it was presented as such by Augustine. Augustine first met Ambrose to improve relations rather than out of Christian interest, while later Ambrose summoned Augustine to tell him about the wrongdoings of his mother Monica (who brought food and drink to the tombs of the martyrs). Chapter 13 focuses on events in 385-386: underlining Augustine's doubts and questioning, Ratti argues that these would demonstrate that Augustine was not a Christian in 385-386. Moreover, his plans to marry would have been suggested and imposed by Monica, while Augustine would have been sceptical about Ambrose's invention of Gervasius and Protasius.

Chapter 14 provides Ratti's interpretation of Augustine's conversion in the garden narrated in the eighth book of the Confessiones: the conversion was not sudden and complete in 386 but rather happened in 395. Augustine was not "fully" Christian between 386 and 395, as would be proven by his works written in Cassiciacum. The famous "Tolle! Lege!" heard by Augustine would recall the practice of randomly opening and reading the Bible (sortes Biblicae), and provide evidence of Augustine's promotion of this practice, against the pagan equivalent (sortes Vergilianae). Chapter 15 presents Augustine's stay in Cassiciacum as a period of study of liberal arts as a Neoplatonist and not as a Christian, thus opposing the two, while Chapter 16, focusing on Augustine's return to Thagaste (388-391), again argues that when he returned to Africa, Augustine was not fundamentally different: he did not abandon the traditional paideia, nor found a monastery in Thagaste, but rather continued his intellectual quest as a philosopher. Chapter 17, discussing Augustine's ordination to priesthood in 391, suggests that Augustine was disappointed because he hoped to be elected a bishop. Chapter 18 aims at shedding more light on Augustine by contrasting him with Jerome and discussing their famously polemical correspondence. Ratti argues that Augustine was jealous of Jerome's linguistic skills and that despite apparent reconciliation, their relationship never improved. Ratti reads Jerome's congratulations to Augustine about his fight against Pelagianism as ironical statements and argues that Augustine wrote the narrative of his conversion in the Confessiones with Jerome in mind, hoping to compete with Jerome's own narrative of conversion. Chapter 19 argues that Augustine progressively broke away from pagan culture only after ordination, as would be particularly shown in his letter of rebuke sent to his former disciple Licentius, presented by Ratti as a staunch pagan, who had written to him with questions about liberal arts and sent him a poem (Augustine, Ep. 26). Chapter 20 finally discusses Augustine's preaching activity as a bishop, mostly on the basis of the newly discovered Dolbeau sermons.

The epilogue of the book goes beyond the focus on the young Augustine to investigate Augustine's fight against what Ratti calls "cultural paganism", started after 391, through the example of his correspondence with the aristocrat Volusianus. Against a more straightforward reading, it offers a peculiar analysis of the correspondence, interpreting Volusianus' short letter, asking a series of questions about Christianity, as an open and thoughtful provocation against Augustine, that would make clever use of irony to attack the bishop (see Augustine, Ep. 135 written in 411-412 ). Ratti particularly investigates polemical uses of Virgil and references to Neoplatonist ideas as transmitted by Marius Victorinus in the correspondence. For Ratti, Volusianus was a pagan intellectual who specialised in the interpretation of Virgil and who challenged Augustine by bringing him back to his own past as a pagan intellectual.

Readers familiar with the modern biographies of Augustine will have noticed that while Ratti's book offers a summary of key episodes in Augustine's early life (with significant gaps: e. g. Manichaeism and Augustine's early works are seldom discussed), it also suggests specific interpretations. In particular, it broadly understands Augustine's conversion as an intellectual turn from pagan to Christian culture that would have taken place in Africa in the 390s. The assumption that, to become a Christian, Augustine had to abandon classical learning and Neoplatonism rests on a particularly narrow definition of Christian belonging. In broader terms, despite this being minimised by Ratti, Augustine grew up in a Christian environment, he entered the catechumenate during childhood (Conf. 1.11.18), adhered to the Manichaeans who proclaimed to be the "true" followers of Christ, returned to the status of catechumen in Milan, and was taught about Christianity and baptised there. Ratti's understanding of Augustine's conversion is however based on a neat separation between classical learning and philosophy, which he calls "pagan", and Christianity. This leads him to interpret the main episodes of Augustine's life in terms of open conflict between paganism and Christianity. For Ratti, Augustine spent all his early life as a "pagan" because he was impregnated by classical culture, while he started to be Christian when he openly fought pagans and their culture as a cleric.² This view, as clearly shown in the book, relates to Ratti's previous studies on the struggle between paganism and Christianity, in particular his work on the Historia Augusta, which is frequently quoted, to highlight potential parallels and influences between the Historia and the Confessiones. The interpretation of episodes of Augustine's life and recollections as proof of conflict between pagans and Christians is often based on a narrow reading of the evidence (in particular the supposed polemical nature of the random reading in the garden scene, or Volusianus' questions understood as open attacks).

More generally, although Ratti's critical approach is certainly commendable, the reviewer found that the absence of any scholarly footnotes in the book, except for a few quotations from literary sources, prevents to a great extent any fruitful scholarly debate. While the book seems intended for a broad audience, the frequent allusions to previous scholarship would have required appropriate referencing, especially because Ratti often critically addresses the interpretations of other specialists, like Marrou, Brown and particularly Lancel, whom he calls "Christian readers" or "hagiographers" of Augustine.³ Ratti's at times strongly polemical and allusive tone is at odds in a book aimed at a wide readership. The same applies to Ratti's philological discussions, attempting to provide corrections to the text of Augustine's works and lead to new interpretations (a striking example, at pp. 48-53, is Ratti's reading of Confessiones II, 6 ("Quin immo ubi me ille pater in balneis vidit pubescentem et inquieta indutum adulescentia": Augustine's describes his father's amazement in the baths at his now reached puberty), interpreted as evidence for the fact that Augustine had an erection and proposing, rather unconvincingly, to correct indutum with induratum (failing to acknowledge the antithesis with "putting on" Christ in the decisive text of Romans 13, 14).

Overall, while the book is generally written in a readable style and provides good overviews of aspects of Augustine's life (for instance chapter 20 on Augustine's preaching activity), Ratti does not give the adequate tools to the general reader to assess his interpretations against the wider scholarly discussion.

Editing is accurate (except for p. 26 "Historia ecclesiastica tripertita"; p. 204 "vont accéléré"; p. 327: "l'emploie du mot"), while there are a few factual errors or inaccurate statements (besides those already listed in Lagouanère's review, for example, Augustine's preserved sermons amount to over 800 rather than around 400 as claimed at p. 279; there is no evidence for Monica reading the Bible to Augustine as claimed at p. 285).

---

Notes:

1.   For an overview of the debate: Madec, G., (1989), "Le néoplatonisme dans la conversion d'Augustin. État d'une question centenaire (depuis Harnack et Boissier, 1888)", in Mayer, C., Chelius, K. H., (eds.), Internationales Symposion über den Stand der Augustinus-Forschung (Würzburg, 1989), 9-25.
2.   For a critical review of Ratti's approach see Lagouanère's review: Revue Etudes Anciennes.
3.   See pp. 22, 24, 46, 64, 104, 127, 175, 186, 217, 233.

(read complete article)

Elisabeth Buchet, Tibur et Rome: l'integration d'une cité latine. Histoires. Dijon: Éditions Universitaires de Dijon, 2015. Pp. 282; 12 p. of plates. ISBN 9782364411401. €22.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Elizabeth Palazzolo, Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (e.palazzolo@thesaurus.badw.de)

Version at BMCR home site

Tibur et Rome, based on the author's 2011 doctoral thesis, provides a thorough and coherent synthesis of the historical, archaeological, and literary source material for Tibur from the city's origins until the early Roman Empire, and demonstrates the potential benefits of approaching identity and cultural change in areas of Roman conquest as a question of both history and memory.¹ As Buchet notes, there has been no comprehensive study of Tibur (modern Tivoli), and the goal of her project is to provide such a synthesis of the city and its inhabitants.

The book begins with a succinct introduction summarizing the history of scholarship on Tibur, defining the objectives and limits of Buchet's inquiry, and addressing a few overarching issues (namely, scholarly debate about the concepts of "Romanization" and cultural identity). For Buchet, the issue of "Romanization," insofar as it applies to the study of Tibur's integration, is fundamentally a problem of vocabulary, and she is willing to admit the term for convenience's sake to describe the range of "changements culturels, politiques, juridiques, sociaux, économiques ... qui peuvent être liés aux interactions entre Rome et Tibur" (15). However, Buchet specifies that characteristics of the relationship between Tibur and Rome should not be applied to other cities; in addition to noting arguments against a standardized process of cultural change across Roman territories, she also outlines several reasons why Tibur's relationship with Rome is exceptional among Italian cities, and even within Latium. Other than this introductory discussion of terminology, the author does not engage extensively with theoretical work on cultural change and identity, or with scholarship addressing these issues elsewhere in the Roman world, and explicitly limits the scope of her investigation to Tibur. The only notable absence from this overview is scholarship on the concept of memory in the ancient world (see discussion below).

The remainder of the book is divided into two sections, "Histoire" and "Mémoire"; the author specifies that history will be taken to encompass "tous les éléments qui permettent de retracer les relations" between the cities from Tibur's origins to the Augustan era, while the section on memory will examine "comment l'identité de Tibur est mise en scène" by both Tiburtines and Romans (20).

The first section, "Histoire," begins with an overview of the geology and topography of the Tiburtine region, then proceeds chronologically through the evidence to compose a narrative of historical events, divided into two periods: from the earliest evidence for prehistoric occupation up to the Roman victory over the Latins in 338 BCE, and from 338 BCE through the end of the Republic, encompassing Rome's gradual integration of Tibur and its inhabitants. The treatment of Tibur's history ends with the beginning of the Empire, at which point, according to Buchet, "l'histoire de Tibur se retrouve donc comme absorbée par celle de Rome" and there is no longer a separate narrative of Tiburtine history (125). This first section of the book primarily provides synthesis, with an excursus for extended discussion at some particularly complex points—for example, the inscription recording a senatus consultum of 159 BCE addressing the Tiburtines, or the evidence for Tibur's allegiance during the civil wars at the end of the Republic.

In the second section, "Mémoire," Buchet examines recurring elements in depictions of Tibur as evidence for how the city was conceptualized by both Tiburtines and Romans. The first subsection addresses the memory of Tibur's origins through divergent mythological traditions of its foundation. The second, and longest, subsection focuses on "religious memory" through the cults of Tibur; a substantial portion is dedicated to the most significant Tiburtine cult site in the late Republican period, the sanctuary of Hercules Victor, and the god's worship in Tibur. The final subsection analyzes the literary memory of Tibur through poetic depictions, which gradually develop a consistent image of the city as an archetypal locus amoenus, aligning closely with its ongoing role in the Empire as a site of elite suburban leisure.

The brief "Conclusion générale" serves to conclude both the final subsection, on the literary memory of Tibur, and the volume as a whole. While this allows a return to the introduction's opening theme—Tibur as a romantic site of poetic inspiration—in contrast to the more complex image of Tibur's identity and relationship with Rome developed over the course of the book, the conclusion ultimately seems too short to permit a full synthesis of the entire work. The overarching questions brought up in the introduction are explored in much greater detail in the second half of the book, and the conclusion's brevity does not allow the implications of arguments made over the course of this section to be connected to one another.

The idea of using memory to look at cultural identity is briefly addressed in the introduction, but it is in the book's second section that Buchet's approach to the source material, and the benefits of this approach, become clear. Earlier, the author defines identity as encompassing "tout ce qui fait une communauté," and gives foundation myths and religion as examples of elements that are harder to track than legal or political status, but whose relationship to identity is nevertheless apparent (18). In this second section, Buchet uses a background of shared memory to draw connections across a wide range of sources, which are all understood as stemming from a society with access to that memory. The cult of Hercules Victor provides good examples of this approach: literary descriptions of the cult and iconographic representations are analyzed to consider what a connection with the god might have signified in antiquity, and Buchet is then able to discuss what magistrates named in inscriptions from Hercules' sanctuary might be signaling (both to other Tiburtines and to Romans) by associating themselves with the cult, and what the city might have been communicating through the monumentalization of the temple complex. The concept of memory therefore offers a way of approaching identity even when the absence of literary sources preserving Tiburtine perspectives presents a substantial hurdle.

It would have been interesting to see discussion of how the author envisions the interaction between history and memory, particularly after she has connected a variety of cultural artifacts—from religious practices to poetic compositions—to shared memories of the past. The relationship between identity and memory comes up repeatedly in the second half of the book: Buchet explores how different Tiburtine foundation myths could have been employed to assert common origins with Rome (135-6) and how the transformation of the nymph Albunea into a sibyl may have been related to "romanizing" the goddess and placing her under the supervision of Roman religious institutions (167-8), among other examples. The relationship between historical memory and the establishment of the historiographic record, which provides a substantial portion of the sources for the first section of the book, could be productively discussed in light of this interest in the identity and motivation of different parties contributing to the memory of Tibur.

Occasionally, it seems that the decision to separate the historical narrative from the concept of memory may have limited discussion of the historiographic source material. In several episodes in the first section of the book, Buchet briefly brings up the relationship between history and historiography: for example, she raises the possibility that Livy's explanation of the declaration of war against Tibur in 361 BCE might be "un choix littéraire ... destiné à donner du relief à un épisode dont les causes restent obscures" (56), and notes places in the 4th century BCE narrative where she says Livy seems to be minimizing the Tiburtine threat against Rome (52-3). While the structure of this first section might have prevented extended discussion, mentioning the idea that Livy's narrative has been shaped by specific motivations raises a variety of questions that are not explored further. When one of these Livian episodes (an unsuccessful nighttime attack on Rome by the Tiburtines in 359 BCE) comes up again in the second section in the context of religious memory, Buchet analyzes the narrative in detail and suggests that some problems with the episode as we have it could indicate it was reworked for a particular purpose by Livy or his sources (218-22). The author proposes two possible explanations for this reworking: one relates to the origins of a ritual from Hercules Victor's cult, but Buchet suggests that this narrative may also be intended to emphasize connections between Tiburtines and Gauls, while simultaneously mocking the Tiburtine threat as insignificant. This raises the possibility that the historical narrative of the Roman-Tiburtine relationship in the 4th century BCE might require more investigation of the source material, which dates to centuries after the events reported, and the ways in which the changing memory of Tibur could have shaped the development of the historiography. This second discussion does not contradict the first section of the book, as the author states she does not believe this understanding of Livy's narrative requires denying the historical reality of some battle fought against the Tiburtines in the vicinity of Rome. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to revisit the historical narrative of Tibur and Rome's conflicts and explore how the conclusions reached in the second half of the book complicate the narrative in the first half, once Buchet has established memory as a framework for examining divergent representations of Tibur's past.

The absence of scholarship on cultural or collective memory is felt in the second half of the book; since this section is explicitly framed in terms of the memory of Tibur, it is surprising not to see references to existing work on how memory operated in the Roman world. While Buchet engages with some related ideas in the introductory discussion of cultural identity, she does not directly address scholarship on memory, and it is not present in the bibliography. Although none of this scholarship focuses on the specific historical situation of Tibur, it investigates many of the same questions discussed in Buchet's work or suggested by her conclusions, and would provide interesting parallels for the development and evolution of the memory of Tibur.²

Ultimately, this comprehensive study of Tibur's complex interactions with Rome provides a nuanced picture of the early phases of a relationship that would end with the city remembered primarily as the site of luxurious villas for Roman emperors. Buchet incorporates an enormous variety of source material, but clear summaries and extensive footnotes make the discussion accessible to a range of readers with different areas of expertise. There are few errors, and those that appear do not overly impede the reader.³ Beyond the narrative of Tibur's history, Buchet also offers an example of how the concept of memory can be used to approach cultural identity in areas of Roman conquest even when textual sources do not preserve the direct testimony of non-Roman communities, and how very different types of evidence can be understood in relation to a background of shared memory.

---

Notes:

1.   Tibur et Rome: étude des processus d'intégration d'une cité latine, Université Paris-Sorbonne.
2.   To give a very limited sample, questions of memory similar to those discussed by Buchet are found in Seider 2013 (Memory in Vergil's Aeneid: Creating the Past), Gallia 2012 (Remembering the Roman Republic: Culture, Politics and History under the Principate), Eckardt 2004 ("Remembering and forgetting in the Roman provinces"), and Alcock 2002 (Archaeologies of the Greek Past: Landscapes, Monuments, and Memories).
3.   For example, page 117 note 3 and page 118 note 5 should both cite Sertorius 26.4 (following the Teubner edition's numbering, which appears to be used in the other footnotes); on page 190 note 2, the incomplete third citation from Martial should read 7.13.3; page 244 note 3 should refer to Odes 3.4.23 rather than 2.4.23. One error appears a few times in the bibliography (but not elsewhere in the text): in the title of Alcock 2007, "landscape" is misprinted as "lanincape," and the same error appears in Cifani 2002 and Patterson 2006; similarly, "friendship" becomes "frieninhip" in the title of Patterson's contribution to Jehne and Pfeilschifter (eds.) 2006.

(read complete article)

Jürgen Hammerstaedt, Pierre-Marie Morel, Refik Güremen (ed.), Diogenes of Oinoanda Epicureanism and Philosophical Debates. Diogène d'Œnoanda Épicurisme et controversies. Ancient and medieval philosophy - Series 1, 55. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2017. Pp. 321. ISBN 9789462701014. €90.00 (hb).

Reviewed by Attila Németh, Eötvös Loránd University (attilanemethelte@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

[The Table of Contents is listed below.]

The present volume is a first: the first collection of papers on Diogenes of Oinoanda, whose early second-century CE inscription, found in Oinoanda in 1884, contains an important summary of Epicurus' teachings.¹ The book stems from an unprecedented event, a three-day international colloquium on Diogenes' polemic. Perhaps more importantly, it makes the ongoing discovery of Diogenes that is taking place in the scholarship, and the related debates, more accessible to a wider audience than ever before. Its scope is unusually wide considering that it combines the study of archaeology, architecture, epigraphy, history, language and Greek philosophy. This interdisciplinary range naturally stems from the nature of Diogenes' inscription on stone, which originally contained an estimated twenty-five thousand words, only a quarter of which we now possess in the form of 299 fragments. The incompleteness of the inscription necessarily leaves much space for speculation, but the consequence of this, in this volume, is a satisfying convergence between the debates concerning the reconstruction of the text and the reconstruction of doctrines. The work is an excellent starting-point for anyone who wants to understand Diogenes and the part of the story of ancient Epicureanism that he represents, and an indispensable resource for the more serious scholar.

The book begins with an enthusiastic foreword by a pioneer of international work on Diogenes, Martin Ferguson Smith, in which he highlights the diverse interest and importance of the inscription. In the Preface, two of the three editors, Pierre-Marie Morel and Jürgen Hammerstaedt, underline the value of Diogenes not only as a precious resource for our knowledge of Epicurean philosophy, but as a testimonial to the ways in which philosophical theory and practice developed under the Roman Empire: an often-overlooked theme, which is also emphasized by Geert Roskam's contribution later in the volume.

Martin Bachmann, to whose memory this volume is dedicated, offers an architectural history of not only the inscription, but also of the city of Oinoanda through urban development models and images, together with a research chronicle of the site. Since he himself participated in the most recent explorations conducted under the aegis of the German Archaeological Institute, his vivid account provides an arresting narrative of the survey results and activities carried on by the archaeologists, including the storehouse erected in 2010 for the protection of the stones of the inscription, and the planned virtual reconstruction of the Stoa wall on which Diogenes shared his message.

Jürgen Hammerstaedt, after reconstructing the structure and the extent of the inscription and orienting the reader to its general content, places Diogenes in the wider epigraphic context of Oinoanda and speculates that Diogenes' inscription may have been a reaction to the so-called Demostheneia epigraph, which records the foundation of a musical festival and competition by C. Julius Demosthenes in 125 CE. Hammerstaedt thus indicates a further function for the inscription in its immediate historical context as a criticism of the local social elites.

Michael Erler's subtle piece argues convincingly that a new fragment (NF 155) is best understood in the context of a standard Aristotelian argument against Middle Platonist argumentation concerning providence. Diogenes is thus seen recycling some Peripatetic reasoning against Plato. In the second part of his paper, Erler reconstructs Diogenes' anti-legalist political utopia—the Epicurean version of Plato's Kallipolis—based on what he appropriately calls the 'Theological Physics-sequence'. Nevertheless, it still remains questionable whether we should also attribute Diogenes' point of view to Epicurus and to all of his followers as Erler does, or rather see here some degree of originality (at least in interpretation) on the part of Diogenes.

Francesco Verde concentrates on how Diogenes dealt with the history of philosophy in a case-study of two fragments (fr. 5 and NF 155). In an analysis which is attentive to the smallest philological details, he shows that the Heraclitean idea of flux wrongly attributed by Diogenes to Aristotle and his school was the result of a hostile doxographical reconstruction, which Diogenes took over from one of his Epicurean sources. In the second part of his paper, he contextualizes NF 155 and attempts to identify its possible sources, but more importantly than the vexed questions of Quellenforschung, we learn about Diogenes' polemical strategy.

Giuliana Leone draws our attention to the fact that Epicurus' concerns with distant astronomical and meteorological phenomena are fully taken up by Diogenes in his inscription. She traces in the relevant texts an apparent controversy concerning the meteôra, and sets up a convincing framework to clarify Diogenes' objectives and the lexical and stylistic forms of his polemics. Her intent is to show how and to what extent Diogenes diverged from Epicurus when he articulated his meteorological views in different contexts.

The following three contributions all address—amongst other matters—the controversy over whether fr. 33 targeted the Cyrenaics or the Stoics. Francesca Masi suggests that Diogenes was targeting both the Stoics and the Cyrenaics in this fragment. To defend her claim, she argues extensively for an attractive hypothesis that the Stoics misconceived and, thus, misrepresented the value Epicureans accorded to virtue, taking it only as a crude instrument for pleasure. Given the resemblance between the resultant understanding and the Cyrenaics' position on virtue, Diogenes chose to utilize the Cyrenaic view as a point of reference in order to clarify and defend his own Epicurean position.

Voula Tsouna reassesses the evidence concerning fr. 49 in which Diogenes openly attacks Aristippus and fr. 33. David Sedley has taken the fragment to be a polemic against the Cyrenaics, and Tsouna cautiously concurs, though also giving a fair and thorough consideration to points raised by Martin Ferguson Smith. The fruit of Tsouna's discussion is harvested when she introduces other fragments, never before discussed in this context, which she convincingly relates to Diogenes' anti-Cyrenaic polemic. Jean-Baptiste Gourinat follows Diogenes' polemic against the Stoics point for point, as it develops in the fragments including fr. 33 to cover a wide range of topics from physics to theology to ethics. His study reveals that Diogenes' criticisms of Stoic positions in the inscription are often counter-attacks against the anti-Epicurean arguments put forward by the Stoics. Although it is difficult to tell how original Diogenes' arguments are, Gourinat thinks that they were mainly original, which he justifies with reference to the atypical vocabulary used by Diogenes in constructing his arguments.

Turning to the Epicurean theory of dreams, Refik Güremen points out that Diogenes wanted to refute all superstitious beliefs about dreams by jointly criticizing the Stoic and Democritean interpretations of dream images. Güremen takes into account the intellectual framework in which Diogenes' polemics appear, which is essentially connected to vital epistemological debates within and between the Hellenistic philosophical schools. He argues convincingly that confronting Democritus' theory helped the Epicurean Diogenes to clarify his own standpoint. The upshot of his discussion is the clarification of the traditional line of defence the Epicureans took to answer a general sceptical reproach against the school.

Alain Gigandet is also interested in Diogenes' theory of dreams, but he narrows his focus to Diogenes' explanation of the mechanism of dream visions based on the Epicurean theory of eidôla. Gigandet provides an excellent analysis of a fragment of Epicurus' On Nature and of the relevant passages in Lucretius about the physical process of sense-perception, a part of which he baptizes 'frayage' or 'spawning': that is the 'path-making' of the eidôla in the sense-organs. This analysis breaks new ground, but there is a missed opportunity to explain how this physical mechanism translates into the mental representation of dreams.²

Questions concerning politics and Diogenes' relationship with his readers naturally arise. Pierre-Marie Morel addresses Diogenes' attack on the harmful practices associated with political power, denouncing the Stoics' idea of the state and justice. He sees Diogenes' originality and genius in the way he rearranges and reformulates the apolitical dogmas of Epicurus, packaging them in a unique new style of political thought, which reflects an ambivalent relationship between the Epicureans and the politics of the city: mistrust and self-interest. Still, as Morel shows, Diogenes' philanthrôpia or public spirit shines through his poetic skills and literary elegance.

Since Diogenes confronts no fewer than twenty rival philosophers or schools in the fragments discovered so far, Geert Roskam's study of Diogenes' polemical approach is an excellent way to round off this volume. Roskam considers the evidence for Diogenes' different roles—as schoolmaster, as rhetorical polemicist and as a sober-minded philosopher—to carry out a fine analysis of his didactic, rhetorical and argumentative strategies within a case study centred on the 'Theological Physics-Sequence'. His exegesis results in a better understanding of why Diogenes' therapeutic philosophical prescription carved in stone had to be polemical at a time when the traditions of philosophy were still at least partially alive even among ordinary people.

The volume is exceptionally well produced and is practically without any typographical or grammatical errors. The illustrations and photographs are all very helpful and advance the reader's understanding of the ongoing research and of the location, arrangement and the contents of the inscription. In particular, Jürgen Hammerstaedt's tracing out by touch of a fragment of the inscription that was embedded in the foundations of a building, but accessible upside down after some digging, shows just how much some of these scholars are devoted to advance our knowledge of Diogenes (Fig. 9, p. 16).

This volume comprises a huge wealth of expertise and offers a broad presentation of the main directions of contemporary research on Diogenes. Although, as Roskam points out (p. 242), the central focus of its attention on polemics might potentially have led to emphasis only on the destructive message of Diogenes, these authoritative interpretations of the corpus engage the reader in the constructive side of his philosophy as well, offering a fascinating and richly detailed resource for anyone interested in not only Diogenes of Oinoanda, but his historical and philosophical milieu and that of Epicureanism under the Roman Empire,

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations IX
Martin Ferguson Smith, Foreword. The Importance of Diogenes of Oinoanda XI
Pierre-Marie Morel and Jürgen Hammerstaedt, Preface XIX
Martin Bachmann, Oinoanda. Research in the City of Diogenes 1
Jürgen Hammerstaedt, The Philosophical Inscription of Diogenes in the Epigraphic Context of Oinoanda. New Finds, New Research, and New Challenges 29
Michael Erler, Diogenes against Plato. Diogenes' Critique and the Tradition of Epicurean Antiplatonism 51
Francesco Verde, Plato's Demiurge (NF 155 = YF 200) and Aristotle's Flux (fr. 5 Smith). Diogenes of Oinoanda on the History of Philosophy 67
Giuliana Leone, Diogène d'Œnoanda et la polémique sur les meteora 89
Francesca Masi, Virtue, Pleasure, and Cause. A case of multi-target polemic? Diogenes of Oenoanda, fr. 32-33 Smith 111
Voula Tsouna, Diogenes of Oinoanda and the Cyrenaics 143
Jean-Baptiste Gourinat, La critique des stoïciens dans l'inscription d'Œnoanda 165
Refik Güremen, Diogenes of Oinoanda and the Epicurean Epistemology of Dreams 187
Alain Gigandet, Diogène, Lucrèce et la théorie épicurienne de l'imaginaire. Fragment 9—De rerum natura IV 971-993 207
Pierre-Marie Morel, La Terre entière, une seule patrie. Diogène d'Œnoanda et la politique 221
Geert Roskam, Diogenes' Polemical Approach, or How to Refute a Philosophical Opponent in an Epigraphic Context 241
Abbreviations used for Diogenes and other Inscriptions of Oinoanda 271
Bibliography 273
About the Authors 291
Index of Places 295
Index of Gods and Mythological Figures or Concepts 296
Index of Ancient Persons, Philosophical Schools and Concepts 297
Index of Persons of Modern Times 301
Index of Ancient Texts 304

---

Notes:

1.   Cf. also Jürgen Hammerstaedt, Martin Ferguson Smith, The Epicurean Inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda: Ten Years of New Discoveries and Research (Bonn: Verlag Dr. Rudolf Habelt, 2014). BMCR review 2016.07.38.
2.   Also cf. Francesca Masi's excellent piece on the subject, which also focuses only on the physical aspect of perception: 'Memory, Self and Self-Determination. The Mind-Body Relation in Epicurus' Psychology' in D. De Brasi and S. Föllinger, eds., Anthropologie in Antike und Gegenwart: Biologische und philosophische Entwürfe vom Menschen (Sankt Augustin, 2015), 203-30.

(read complete article)

Maxwell Teitel Paule, Canidia, Rome's First Witch. Bloomsbury classical studies monographs. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Pp. x, 218. ISBN 9781350003880. $114.00.

Reviewed by Peta Greenfield, University of Sydney (peta.greenfield@gmail.com)

Version at BMCR home site

Preview

This monograph explores the various incarnations of Canidia in Horace's corpus. To that end, Paule offers detailed examination of Satire 1.8, Epode 5, Epode 17, as well as brief examination of her minor appearances in Epode 3, Satire2.1 and Satire 2.8. Paule argues that Canidia fulfils a variety of specific roles across these poems. In seeking to understand this literary figure on her own terms in each of her major appearances, Paule strengthens our understanding of Horace's poetic intent and enriches our appreciation of the complexity of the poet's engagement with witches and demonic figures. Paule's prose style is clear and strives to engage the reader. The combination of clarity and insightful analysis in this monograph makes the positions offered engaging, even in the moments where you might disagree with the interpretation.

In order to establish the basis for the thesis, Paule examines the language around witches in order to demonstrate the significant overlaps between particular words. The thorny topic of the category of witches in classical literature is a pillar in Paule's case. A consideration of the ambiguous Latin terminology that is lumped under the English term 'witch' provides orientation, while allowing Paule to clarify his interpretation of the key vocabulary. Ultimately Paule finds that close examination of the Latin vocabulary reveals the significant problems it poses for interpretation rather than offering a clear paradigm through which to understand the concept of a Roman witch. Paule's opening balances confidence with anticipation of the reader's doubts and questions. It is up to the individual reader to make their own judgment as to the extent that their concerns have been allayed by his discussion. Certainly, for my own reading, some of my questions were satisfied as I continued to read. Paule has a tendency to offer interpretations of the Latin that both recognise the complexity of associations and find difficulties in reconciling them to a linear argument (such as the concluding matter regarding sagae, pp. 13-14). The tantalising challenges of semantic fields upon translation will prove fruitful ground to revisit in future projects.

Paule's project is classical, but his approach hints at a seductive path for literary scholarship that is simultaneously compelling and somewhat risky. He explicitly seeks to examine the Canidia of each poem as a separate entity. This is a move that trends away from the approach of seeking patterns across a corpus and it has a lot to recommend it in terms of allowing each poem to be a moment contained and bounded by itself. Each chapter offers a contained study with close reference to the poem, clear intertextual references from Latin and Greek poets, as well as some detail pertaining to context.

Paule argues for Canidia to be read as a strictly fictional character. This frees him from the theories of Canidia as a stand- in for a real-life lover or antagonist of Horace and dispenses with attempts to malign real as well as literary women. For Paule's purposes Canidia's significance is generally bounded by the specific poem in which she appears. The approach yields some fascinating insights into the nature of witches, demons, and the potential value of Canidia as closure in Epode 17. Paule is most interested in how Horace has chosen Canidia as a literary device to further poetic ends. This produces a tension in the work. While the project begins with the realm of definitions around the vocabulary pertaining to witches, the difficulty of applying these with certainty is revealed when considering Horace's poems. As poet, Horace relies upon definitions as part of his set-up in engaging the reader, but also actively seeks to bend those definitions to poetic ends. As a consequence, Paule focuses upon Horatian incarnations of Canidia, the connections between particular manifestations of Canidia, and the broader semantic fields that these manifestations touch upon.

There is no clear or easy way to separate out Horace's poetic project from the less than precise semantic fields offered by Latin terminology around witches. Paule approaches the situation with an equal measure of caution and confidence. The strongest moment comes in Chapter 4 'Routing the Empusa: The Iambic Canidia of Epode 17'. The argument that the Canidia of Epode 17 is best understood as an empusa is immediately appealing on the grounds that it is the final Epode. The implied banishment of Canidia in the course of this poem fits well with Paule's argument that Canidia is both a character within the corpus and an embodiment of the Epodes. A tension lingers, however, in the prominence of Canidia in Epode 17. Her dominant role in this final poem is enhanced when her appearances across the earlier corpus are taken into account.

The organization of the monograph is clear and approachable. After the introductory matter, Paule moves into the project of examining each of the major Canidia poems in chronological order. Chapters 1-4 follow the same structure which will make this monograph easy for scholars who need to dip in quickly for analysis of a particular poem. Paule offers the poem first in Latin with a face-to-face translation. This ensures the usefulness of the text to a wide audience. The line-by-line approach makes for ease of reference and stands as Paule's first offering for the interpretation of Canidia. Chapter 5 is organized slightly differently to accommodate the brevity of Canidia's appearance in Epode 3, Satire 2.1 and Satire 2.8. In this case, the poems are not treated in full, and only the excerpt that is pertinent for the study is offered, both in Latin and translation. Throughout the chapters, Paule's interpretation from the point of the text is guided by the content.

Chapter 1 explores common terminology connected with witches in Latin such as saga, maga, venefica, anus, lamia, malefica. Chapter 2 is mostly concerned with the liminal position Canidia occupies between female mourner and magical practitioner. Chapter 3 sees Canidia emerge as a strix/lamia with elements of a venefica. Chapter 4 focuses on the connections Canidia shares with an empusa. Chapter 5 returns to smaller instances of Canidia as venefica.

The last year of consultation with scholarly material is 2014. This is to be expected given the nature and length of the publication process. It does mean that interested scholars will be curious to see how Paule's position on Horace develops in response to collections such as Bather, P., Stocks, C. (eds.) Horace's Epodes: Contexts, Intertexts, and Reception (2016).

(read complete article)

Jacob A. Latham, Performance, Memory, and Processions in Ancient Rome: The 'pompa circensis' from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xxii, 345. ISBN 9781107130715. $120.00.

Reviewed by Susan Dunning, University of Toronto (s.bilynskyj@utoronto.ca)

Version at BMCR home site

Full text (subscription)

The Roman pompa circensis, the procession that preceded games at the Circus Maximus, had its origins in the mists of the early Republic and saw its final performance during the fifth or sixth century CE. Thus, the development of the pompa circensis is closely bound up with the history of Rome itself. Latham's monograph draws on his earlier studies on the subject and is the first to focus on circus processions and related pompae. This work goes beyond filling a major gap in scholarship on Roman processions: Latham's decision to approach the pompa circensis through a sweeping, diachronic study sheds light on religious and socio-political changes at Rome over many centuries.

Our surviving evidence for pompae circenses is highly fragmentary, and Latham makes careful use of a wide variety of materials—literature, coinage, imperial reliefs, sarcophagoi, etc.—in order to reconstruct and analyse the procession at different stages in history. His study is meticulously researched and aimed at a specialist audience, but also serves as a valuable sourcebook. Direct quotations from ancient texts are often tucked away in the endnotes; while translations are provided to make them accessible to readers from other fields, their separation from the context of the discussion impedes the reader's engagement with the literary evidence, while images remain in the body of the text and are thus given more prominent placement. The work is divided into two main sections: the first provides a reconstruction of an "ideal-type" for the pompa from the Late Republic, before changes were introduced by Julius Caesar, and the second section traces the pompa's development under the emperors and into Late Antiquity.

In Chapter 1, Latham examines the description of the Republican pompa circensis set down by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which is based on an earlier record of the procession from Fabius Pictor. Latham cautions against relying too heavily on these literary accounts, which were likely distorted by their authors' desire to create a Greek heritage for Rome, and instead highlights the "grammar" and "syntax" of the ideal pompa, the roles and identities of participants and their ordering in each procession, constructed in order to inspire "wonder" among spectators. Human participants (magistrates, the praeses ludorum, youths, charioteers and athletes, dancers, musicians, etc.) are discussed in Chapter 1, and in Chapter 2, attention is given to the divine participants, whose presence was indicated through statues (simulacra) carried on litters (fercula) or objects symbolizing deities (exuuiae) that were carried in tensae, (special chariots). The procession of gods and sacred objects constituted a kind of performed theology through which divine closeness and difference could be communicated; disturbances in this pompa deorum could also serve as omens indicating divine displeasure. Chapter 3 gives an overview of the itinerary of the pompa circensis from the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline through the Forum, and finally into the Circus Maximus, situating it within the physical landscape of Rome as well as the landscape of communal memory.

In the second section, Chapter 4 looks beyond the Republican period to innovations in the pompa circensis introduced by Julius Caesar and his successors. Latham illustrates how the inclusion of images or symbols associated with living or deceased emperors in the pompa deorum, or at times the presence of emperors themselves, complemented other expressions of divine privilege, such as the extension of triumphal honours. Like the triumph, the pompa circensis reinforced the power of the imperial family and their unique status between the traditional gods and the Roman people. The chapter concludes with an examination of the additions of imperial building programmes to the processional route. Chapter 5 is a bold venture into processions derived from the original pompae circenses at Rome, from pompae at provincial circus games to processions preceding theatrical spectacles (pompae theatrales), for which the evidence is even more fragmentary. The final chapter deals with the fate of the pompa circensis in the late empire: while circus games and processions continued to be highly popular, their "excesses" and close associations with traditional religious expressions came into conflict with Christianity's growing influence at the imperial court. Latham traces the process by which the pompa was reformed and stripped of "pagan" associations before evidence for its performance ends in the fifth century CE, and for circus games in the sixth century CE.

Latham's diachronic approach to the pompa circensis using a variety of source materials is one of the great strengths of this study: the investigation would be far less rich and fruitful if it had only taken into account a single type of evidence, or if it were restricted to a narrower window of time. Given the paucity of concrete evidence for these processions, Latham's approach strives to avoid the extremes of unsubstantiated speculation and failure to engage fully with the fragmentary material. The conclusions in this study often manage to find this middle ground, but on occasion veer too far towards conjecture. For example, at intervals throughout the work it is suggested that Christian symbols could have been introduced into the pompa circensis as a replacement for the exuuiae of the gods of polytheism. In the last chapter, it is revealed that this hypothesis is based on coin reverses depicting emperors holding cruciform sceptres and mappae (the cloths dropped to signal the start of the games). The reverses could illustrate the appearance of emperors and the items they carried in the procession, it is argued, and the cruciform sceptres could be conceived of as taking the place of "pagan" exuuiae, thereby making the Christian god present within the pompa. While the first theory is plausible, the latter fails to account for the ubiquity of these sceptres on late imperial coinage, often in contexts completely dissociated from the pompa circensis. It seems likely that ancient spectators would have perceived of the cruciform sceptre as a symbol of the power and Christian allegiance of the emperor, rather than as a relic replacing ancient exuuiae.

This study also addresses questions of more general interest in scholarship on religion at Rome. Latham demonstrates how imperial interference in the pompa circensis transformed and reoriented the performance to serve as a showcase of the emperor's role in preserving the continuity of Rome through dynasty and close relationship with the gods (particularly his deified predecessors). This development has close parallels in the development of supplications or the Saecular Games from the Republican to Imperial periods. Latham also demonstrates how the malleability of the sequence of the pompa in the past, as well as its association with imperial authority, provided a vehicle for the pompa's secularization and adaption for the Christian context of the fourth and fifth centuries. Festivals and performances involving sacrifices or other offerings to the gods could not be so easily detached from the context of traditional religion, and ceased to be held at an earlier date.

Latham enters into the debate on the role and nature of religious belief in Roman society in Chapter 2. His analysis of the "performed theology" of the procession allows that the Romans could have genuinely held beliefs of a religious nature, but, following a widely-held position, he gives primacy to civic performance and action as the authority for religious thought. Yet at p. 51, Latham cites Seneca's famous critique of people creatively initiating acts of worship through the offering of their talents to various gods on the Capitoline, including an old mime who still danced for the gods.¹ While Latham hesitates to emphasize an emotional engagement with divinities in the pompae, his catalogue of the various participants in these processions and the responses of spectators to innovations invite further research on the subject. If a mime could view his art as a means to enter into a relationship with a deity, could the dancers, musicians, and athletes have viewed their roles in the pompa circensis in a similar fashion?

In Chapter 4, Latham favours Gradel's emphasis on power as the essential factor separating humanity from divinity,² and emphasizes the development of imperial power through the inclusion of images of deified emperors and their family members, diui and diuae, in the pompa. Latham departs from Gradel's argument in allowing that humanity and divinity may have been distinct and absolute categories for the Romans, following Koortbojian and Levene, ³ but his own evidence for the pompa provides opportunities to show that the Romans did not reduce divinity merely to the quality of power. For example, he observes that the elephant-drawn chariot granted to the image of diuus Augustus would have been visually impressive and powerful, but rather than elevating Augustus to the level of Jupiter or Juno, the new vehicle would have differentiated the emperor's status from that of traditional gods, given the honours of humbler litters or horse-drawn chariots (p. 107).

Latham's project serves as a reminder that the significance of a performance or practice is understood most fully only when its history is studied in its entirely, as far as possible, and in dialogue with more general changes and developments in society. Through his ambitious approach to the pompa circensis, Latham's study gives us a better understanding of the symbiotic relationships of entertainment, religion, and expressions of power across the centuries in Roman society.

---

Notes:

1.   Preserved in Augustine, De ciu. D. 6.10.4.
2.   Gradel, I. (2002) Emperor Worship and the Roman Religion. Oxford.
3.   Levene, D.S. (2012) "Defining the Divine in Rome", TAPhA 142, 41–81 at Project Muse; and Koortbojian, M. (2013) The Divinization of Caesar and Augustus: Precedents, Consequences, Implications. Cambridge.

(read complete article)